EO Thought Leadership Forum Episode 006

Welcome to the EO Thought Leadership Forum, episode 6. My name is Joe Apfelbaum from EO Brooklyn.

And I'm James Ashcroft from EO South Florida.

Yay! So we're back, and today we're going to talk about public speaking.

Yes, yes, Joe. You know, it's something that I don't have much experience with, and when you and I first got to know each other after EO Nerve last year, Um, it's something that intrigued me because it became apparent talking to you that it changed your life to a degree.

Yeah.

So I just wanted to kind of understand for us entrepreneurs or writers or whoever the audience is here, um, and they're interested in, in, in writing, um, how, how much it can impact and change your life. So I'd love to hear some, some of, uh, your, your, uh, experiences in it.

So for me, I was always super comfortable talking to people one-on-one, super, super okay with that. But talking to a group of people, I always felt this like anxiety. It's like small anxiety that I don't know where it came from, and I never wanted to pursue it. I just kind of stayed away from like, you know, leading, uh, conversation publicly. I remember the one time I had to do it in Louisville, Kentucky. I had to have like a whole bottle of wine before, and I was still nervous, and I still had the jitters. And so when I went into business, I figured, you know, I don't necessarily need to do that. That's just not in my wheelhouse, right? And one day Google approached me. They sent me an email and they said, hey, how would you like to be a certified Google trainer and train small business owners about Google's products and services? And I said, I replied right away. I was like, of course I would love that. Um, I didn't realize that it would mean that I would have to do the seminars and all that and do public speaking, but they wanted to see a video of me doing public speaking. So I got together with my partner. My partner was much more comfortable doing it than me. And together we made some video and make believe we were all like massive public speakers. And we sent the video in and they approved us. And we were like, oh my goodness, this is going to be a great opportunity. They're going to send us a bunch of clients to come to seminars. Clients are going to pay. We're going to get all the money, and on top of that, we're going to have all these potential clients that want ours that want to use Google services that we can help them with as a marketing company. So it turned out we went for a training, and after the first seminar, I realized that it was really, really, really brutally hard on me. I was pacing. I was saying the word basically as every other word, and I was just super, super, super uncomfortable. Super uncomfortable. And so I had to start searching about how to do public speaking. I had to— I bought books, one really good book called Own the Room. Um, I, I spoke to mentors that are, that are constantly doing public speaking, like this rabbi that I know and a few other mentors. Um, I saw people speaking publicly and I would walk over to them after and ask them how they got into it, how they did it. And the consensus was the more that you do it, The better you become at it.

Okay, but just to back up a bit, this anxiety that you had, did you figure out, was this just because you lacked experience, or was this just more of a personal, um, issue that you were having just in general?

The big thing that I realized is that when you're in front of a bunch of people, especially a bunch of business owners that kind of size you up, you can't hide behind anything. In front of one person, you could kind of fake it till you make it. But if you have 100 pairs of eyes, that's 200 eyeballs looking at you face to face, you are very, very vulnerable. That fear comes from having all these energies all focused on you and you having to perform. In other words, you having to be yourself and you can't fool everyone. That's why some people really suck at it and they're just not good public speakers because they're trying to fool the audience. They don't have the courage to be themselves.

Okay.

And it takes a lot of courage to be yourself.

Right. So you believe that you couldn't be your true self up there? Is that what you were saying?

I just had a hard time letting go of, of the fears that I was having with, with just me being my authentic self. Put it that way.

Okay.

I had a big fear of me being my authentic self, and as a result I had to come to terms with that. And through getting in front of other people, that forced me to accelerate the process of self-awareness and made me realize certain things. Number one, I was overweight. Number two is I didn't have enough proper words in my vocabulary. And even today, I'm still improving my vocabulary and I'm adding a whole bunch of new words, but still I don't have enough words. I haven't been reading enough. I haven't been doing enough enough speaking and using, utilizing other words. I'm much better than I ever was, but there are half a million words in the English language. And what, I use 3,000 of them like a, like a 3-year-old, like a 4-year-old?

Yeah. But this is an interesting point though, because some of the best speakers, or I wouldn't even say they're the best speakers. Some of my favorite speakers, don't have an extensive Oxford English Dictionary-sized vocabulary. They're just very engaging. They're very natural. Right.

So it has to do with being natural, but also knowing that I don't have that and knowing that I want to have that.

Yeah.

That also limits me, makes me aware all of a sudden that I'm using the word basically and using the word stuff instead of actually using more refined, better words. That would describe what I want to say. Even the fact that I just had better words, you know? Like, I could have said something that was a little more articulate, although I was being myself and that comes across.

Right. So you— so what I'm hearing you say, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that your authentic self, the one that you— who you aspire to be, has a better vocabulary, right?

Spends more time—

But what you're saying is that that's personal to you.

You don't believe that— Right, right, right. No, that doesn't have to be for anybody else. Absolutely not.

All I'm saying is I just want to make sure that people who are listening to this don't have a takeaway saying that, that everyone should be in speech school.

Absolutely not. Absolutely not. If you want to be a public speaker, ultimately for me, it was about being comfortable with yourself. If you're afraid of photos, if you're afraid of writing, if you're afraid of selfies, if you're afraid of hearing yourself speak, if you're afraid of getting in front of other people, It's not because you're not good at it, because you are good at it as a human being. You're good at it. You're good at just being, being, right? When you walk into a room, you're not covering your face with a mask because you're afraid of what people are going to think about you. So why are you afraid of taking a photo of yourself, a selfie, and putting it online? Because you want to be your best self all the time? Why can't you just be yourself all the time and let other people see you? And the answer is, is because you're not necessarily comfortable when you see yourself. You're not necessarily comfortable when you hear yourself. You're not necessarily comfortable when you are projected back your energy that you're giving out to other people on the masses, and you're getting 100 people project that energy back at you. You become very humble and very vulnerable. And as a result, it makes you realize certain things about yourself. Like for me, it made me realize that I was 63 pounds heavier than I am today, and I really didn't want to be that way. And I was embarrassed that I was like that.

So what you— what I'm hearing now is that self-acceptance Is a big component of being a good speaker once you're up there.

Right. And just, and just because you have great self-confidence, it doesn't mean you have self-acceptance. Because I would never want to accept myself being that overweight. Accepting yourself— and I was super confident, but I wasn't willing to accept myself.

Right.

It's a very, very big difference between being confident with what you have and accepting A level of yourself that you feel might be mediocre.

Right. So how much time passed from that initial Google? Let's say the first couple of years. It's been a 3-year process for you.

Yeah, absolutely. Because not only did it open that door, it also opened the door of me realizing that I'm shy to get my photo and my video online. Why? Because when I was doing the seminars, I had a photographer and I had a videographer and they were putting my videos and my photos online and I was on Fox Business Network. And I was, I was asked to speak in many other places and many other news channels. And suddenly I'm like, oh my goodness, I'm like this public, this public persona now. And I realized I had a fear of it and I had to kind of go through a process of discovering why am I afraid of all this? And that limited me from really being myself.

Right. So, so like everything, there's no overnight success. So the whole, self-acceptance phase has been a multi-year project.

Absolutely. And the same thing with weight loss, multi, multi-year project.

Right. Um, just, you know, just for the EO crowd here or the entrepreneurs who are listening, you know, they like the big takeaways. So going through that transition is obviously very uncomfortable, but can you touch upon what successes you have had that are directly correlated to taking that leap of faith into the public speaking?

Well, first of all, just getting in front of 10,000 people over the course of 3 years and having a conversation with them gives me a significant amount of self-confidence, self-acceptance, ability to articulate my message and what my own personal message is on top of what my business's message is.

Right.

Right? Because you're always sprinkling that with your own personality, with your own purpose, you know, that purpose thing. So for me, personal satisfaction It gives me to be able to express myself, just like a bird chirps. You think about it, you get up in the morning, you go for a run, you hear the birds chirping. I know in Florida there's birds on palm trees, but certainly in New York, and especially Prospect Park, you hear the birds chirping. They're chirping with, with all their might, with all the love in the world. They're just giving their all. There's no depressed birds out there. You don't see any birds dragging their feet, or at least I don't. I don't imagine that there's any depressed birds. They chirp with all their might and all their energy. And to be able to live life that way, to be all in, Public speaking has done that for me, to really be able to get up and shout and just be myself and not be worried about what other people think. That's number one.

That's fantastic.

Number 2, when you're talking to people one-on-one, there's very limited amount of dissemination of information that you can give. If you have a message that you want to give, whether it's a message for your business, a message for your personal life, a message for society to make the world a better place or to do something great, What better way is there, a more efficient way, than speaking to the masses, speaking to many people at once? Ultimately, when I talk, I'm talking to one person at a time at every seminar, but when I am able to get up there and I have the skills that I developed over time to speak to many people at the same time, that's a powerful skill. And that's a skill that creates a significant amount of influence for the individual. Just when you get up, just the fact that you have a right to get up and speak, that gives you a certain amount of influence. And it, as a result, it turns into business opportunities, it turns into speaking opportunities, it turns into thought leadership opportunities. You start curating information that's important to you that you want to disseminate. Think about what's your favorite quote, what's your favorite movie, what are your favorite— what's your favorite vegetable? Think about things that are important to you and why they're important to you. What are the anecdotes in your life? What are the stories? that you want to tell? And we don't think about those things unless we need to go publicly and share that with other people. And suddenly we start saying, these are some great lessons that I learned in my life, in my business, from my family, from my friends, from my community. And you have a lot more impact that you can have because now you know what your stories are because you need to disseminate them.

That's fantastic, Joe. You know, it's very inspiring to hear your story and about the transformations that you've made in your personal life. Using personal and business life, using public speaking as a tool. I think it's something that everyone should be doing more of. So thanks for sharing.

So thank you very much, James. So this has been another episode of the EO Thought Leadership Forum. This is episode 006. I'm super excited to be doing this. I hope you enjoy all this. And if you are enjoying it, James, what should people do?

They should subscribe, Joe. They should subscribe to this channel and tell all their friends about it. Share, share, share.

Leave a comment in the box below, let everyone know, and send us an email and tell us what you think. Till the next time, see you all and enjoy your summer. Bye.